Superior Features of Orion's Flex Stretch Wrapping Line

Hi, I’m Bob Scobey with Orion’s technical support and training center and I’m here in our Alexandria, Minnesota facility to talk to you about our Flex line of stretch wrappers. Our Flex line of stretch wrappers is basically a continuance of our company’s mantra which is basically—build everything out of steel, as you can see, with our base assemblies here and our rugged towers that we have here. Build our equipment out of non-proprietary components, which means it keeps you up and running faster by allowing you to get your components at local vendors and build our electronics and our controls package with the leading technology that’s out there. So stick around, take a look at some of the segments coming up and we’re going to go into more detail on what’s new with our Flex line.

Here we are in the Flex build area and we’ve got a Flex LPD base assembly on the table, ready for build, ready for completion. What you’ll notice is we’ve got our traditional 3/8-inch turntable plate assembly, we’ve got our quarter-inch real steel bottom plate, we’ve got a forklift channel rails here, but I think what we need to take a focus on is actually what goes on underneath the turntable.

What we have underneath the turntable are 18 of our dura-glide caster assemblies and as you can see those are pressed in sealed barings. I mean, it’s incredibly tough material for our caster assemblies. In the center, what we’ve also got is our center flange baring. And our flange barings, what we’ve been using for years on our Orion equipment, and this is a pivoting center flange baring—you know, very easy to get your hands on in the field, very durable.

For our center sprocket area, what we’ve got is, again, the sprocket itself, our number 50 chain, available, again, at any local hardware store. But we’ve got our revel logic sensing equipment here. And with revel logic what we do is we’re actually sensing the teeth of the sprocket so we know within a degree and one-half where that load is and where each corner reference is—extremely accurate. What we’ve added new for this year is a separate home position sprocket, so we take advantage of our tooth counting here, which gives us our revel logic accuracy. But we also have a true home position sensor here, which is, again, picking up true home. One nice benefit is that everything, now, under the table is M12 quick release, so makes field adjustments, field replacements much easier.

The chain assembly has a common take-up or a spring loaded take-up here for our chain tensioner, which means, really, zero maintenance other than just making sure that there’s garbage taken away from the underside of the table as it builds up from use. No more chain adjustments; everything is spring loaded; very easy.

Okay, we’ve got the back of the LPD machine here. We’re actually looking in the tower. One thing that you’ll notice is the vertically mounted carriage lift reducer. It’s a standard BT175, available at just about any mechanical supply shop, standard AC motor, belt lift drive. One thing that’s kind of unique to the Flex line is our belt lift assembly. Everything’s done on a standard take-up. We do have a broken belt or product obstruction switch assembly up here so that when the carriage comes down on to something the belt will slack and the switch will actually tell the computer that we’ve hit some interference, maybe hit a box on the way down. Also tells us if we’ve broken the belt, maybe the belt’s been cut, has worn out, or, you know, anything that goes through, we do have a way of knowing when there is a failure.

In keeping with the maintenance protocols on the machine, we’ve made sure that the, you know, all the switches are M12 quick disconnect, which do make it much easier for doing service on the machines in the field and makes it much easier on the technicians for replacement. So this is nice features on the Flex themselves.

One thing that we’ve added new for this year is a quick disconnect Mur distribution block. What you’ll find here is a series of M12 disconnects that go to different devices on the carriage itself. What this does: it allows a technician to go out and quickly diagnose what’s going on with a machine if there is an issue. There are actual LEDs that are around each M12 that will light up when the device is activated. Not only does it make it a quick disconnect for replacing and repairing the machine, but it also gives a neat place for diagnosis. Connected to the bottom of the Mur block is a high industrial grade conductor cable that is in protected power-trite. This adds another layer of protection on the machine itself. So a lot of neat changes for this year.

Alright, here we are in our Flex build area once again and what we have here is something that we’ve come up to address some of the different size mandrel lengths cores we are seeing out in the field. This is an adjustable bottom mandrel that we have, which does allow us to use different types of film, different manufacturers from different badge numbers. As you may know, a lot of different manufacturers will have different size core tubes and that can pose a problem if the machine is set for one particular core size and then you get the next batch and it’s completely different. So what we’ve come up with is an adjustable core mandrel that allows us to decrease the size of the film core used or increase the size and it is lockable so that we can lock that into position and the machine can run really any core size that the manufacturer ‘s can come out with. It’s a very simple, neat, very elegant solution to a problem that we see out in the field.

Here we have our H66 High Profile Platform assembly on its build stand. One of the things I’d like to point out is just how heavy weight this steel is. This is quarter-inch steel throughout the entire frame. We are using our dual-caster assemblies on all four corners on axis here. Everything is fairly easy to get to. We are using standard number 50 chain, standard over the counter reducer, standard over the counter motor, and new again for this year, is an addition of a home position prox sensor, which gives us yet another level of accuracy. We have our revel logic proximity sensor here in its floating cage. Again, we’ve got that listed here—quick disconnect. But we’ve added yet another sensor here on the bottom which is reading its target which gives us true home. It actually gives us another level of accuracy. So we take advantage of our revel logic, which is accurate within a degree and one-half throughout rotation and we have a true home position sensor which allows us to line up every single time at its true home position.